Vagabondia

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

  CHAPTER VI. ~ “WANTED, A YOUNG PERSON.”

  THEEE was much diligent searching of the advertising columns of thedaily papers for several weeks after this. Advertisements, in fact,became the staple literature, and Dolly’s zeal in the perusal of themwas only to be equalled by her readiness to snatch at the opportunitiesthey presented. No weather was too grewsome for her to confront, and norepresentation too unpromising for her to be allured by. In the morningshe was at Bayswater calling upon the chilling mother of six (fourof them boys) whose moral nature needed judicious attention, and whorequired to be taught the rudiments of French, German, and Latin; in theafternoon she was at the general post-office applying to Q. Y. Z., whohad the education of two interesting orphans to negotiate for, and whowas naturally desirous of doing it as economically as possible; and atnight she was at home, writing modest, business-like epistles to everyletter in the alphabet in every conceivable or inconceivable part of thecountry.

  “If I had only been born ‘a stout youth,’ or ‘a likely young man,’ or‘a respectable middle-aged person,’ I should have been ‘wanted’ a dozentimes a day,” she would remark; “but as it is, I suppose I I must waituntil something ‘presents itself,’ as the Rev. Marmaduke puts it.”

  And in defiance of various discouraging and dispiriting influences, shewaited with a tolerable degree of tranquillity until, in the course oftime, her patience was rewarded. Sitting by the fire one morning withTod and a newspaper, her eye was caught by an advertisement which,though it did not hold out any extra inducements, still attracted herattention, so she read it aloud to Aimée and ‘Toinette.

  “Wanted, a young person to act as companion to an elderly lady. Apply atthe printers.”

  “There, Aimée,” she commented, “there is another. I suppose I mightcall myself ‘a young person,’ Don’t you think I had better ‘apply at theprinter’s’?”

  “They don’t mention terms,” said Aimée.

  “You would have to leave home,” said ‘Toinette.

  Dolly folded up the paper and tossed it on to the table with a halfsigh. She had thought of that the moment she read the paragraph, andthen, very naturally, she had thought of Griffith. It would not befeasible to include him in her arrangements, even if she made any.Elderly ladies who engage “young persons” as companions were not inthe habit of taking kindly to miscellaneous young men, consequently theprospect was not a very bright one.

  There would only be letter-writing left to them, and letters seemed suchcold comfort contrasted with every-day meetings. She remembered, too,a certain six months she had spent with her Bilberry charges inSwitzerland, when Griffith had nearly been driven frantic by her absenceand his restless dissatisfaction, and when their letters had only seemednew aids to troublous though unintentional games at cross-purposes.There might be just the same thing to undergo again, but, then, howwas it to be avoided? It was impossible to remain idle just at thisjuncture.

  “So it cannot be helped,” she said, aloud. “I must take it if I canget it, and I must stay in it until I can find something more pleasant,though I cannot help wishing that matters did not look so unpromising.Tod, you will have to go down, Aunt Dolly is going to put on her hat andpresent herself at the printer’s in the character of a young person insearch of an elderly lady.”

  Delays were dangerous, she had been taught by experience, so she ranup-stairs at once for her out-door attire, and came down in a fewminutes, drawing on her gloves and looking a trifle ruefully at them.

  “They are getting discouragingly white at the seams,” she said, “and itseems almost impossible to keep them sewed up. I shall have to borrowAimée’s muff. What a blessing it is that the weather is so cold!”

  At the bottom of the staircase she met Mollie.

  “Phemie is in the parlor, Dolly,” she announced, “and she wants to seeyou. I don’t believe Lady Augusta knows she is here, either, she looksso dreadfully fluttered.”

  And when she entered the room, surely enough Phemie jumped up with anervous bound from a chair immediately behind the door, and, droppingher muff and umbrella and two or three other small articles, caught herin a tremulous embrace, and at once proceeded to bedew her with tears.

  “Oh, Dolly!” she lamented, pathetically; “I have come to say good-by;and, oh! what shall I do without you?”

  “Good-by!” said Dolly. “Why, Phemie?”

  “Switzerland!” sobbed Phemie. “The--the select seminary at Geneva,Dolly, where th-that professor of m-music with the lumpy face was.”

  “Dear me!” Dolly ejaculated. “You don’t mean to say you are going there,Phemie?”

  “Yes, I do,” answered Euphemia. “Next week, too. And, oh dear, Dolly!” trying to recover her handkerchief, “if it had been anywhere elseI could have borne it, but that,” resignedly, “was the reason mammasettled on it. She found out how I _loathed_ the very thought of it,and then she decided immediately. And don’t you remember those mournfulgirls, Dolly, who used to walk out like a funeral procession, and howwe used to make fun--at least, how you used to make fun of the ladyprincipal’s best bonnet?”

  It will be observed by this that Miss Dorothea Crewe’s intercourse withher pupils had not been as strictly in accordance with her position asinstructress as it had been friendly. She had even gone so far as to setdecorum at defiance, by being at once entertaining and jocular, thoughto her credit it must be said that she had worked hard enough forher modest salary, and had not neglected even the most trivial of hernumerous duties.

  She began to console poor Euphemia to the best of her ability, butEuphemia refused to be comforted.

  “I shall have to take lessons from that lumpy professor, Dolly,” shesaid. “And you know how I used to hate him when he _would_ make love toyou. And that was mamma’s fault, too, because she would patronize himand call him ‘a worthy person.’ He was the only man who admired you Iever knew her to encourage, and she would n’t have encouraged him if hehad n’t been so detestable.”

  It was very evident that the eldest Miss Bilberry was in a highlyrebellious and desperate state of mind. Dolly’s daily visits,educational though they were, had been the brightest gleams of sunlightin her sternly regulated existence. No one had ever dared to joke in theBilberry mansion but Dolly, and no one but Dolly, had ever made the clangatherings bearable to Euphemia; and now that Dolly was cut offfrom them all, and there were to be no more jokes and no more smalladventures, life seemed a desert indeed. And then with the calamitousprospect of Switzerland and the lumpy professor before her, Phemie wascrushed indeed.

  “Mamma doesn’t know I came,” she confessed, tearfully, at last; “butI could n’t help it, Dolly, I could n’t go away without asking you towrite to me and to let me write to you. You will write to me, won’tyou?”

  Dolly promised at once, feeling a trifle affected herself. She hadalways been fond of Phemie, and inclined to sympathize with her, and nowshe exerted herself to her utmost to cheer her. She persuaded her tosit down, and after picking up the muff and umbrella and parcels, tooka seat by her, and managed to induce her to dry her tears and enter intoparticulars.

  “It will never do for Lady Augusta to see that you have been crying,” she said. “Dry your eyes, and tell me all about it, and--wait a minute,I have a box of chocolates here, and I know you like chocolates.”

  It was a childish consolation, perhaps, but Dolly knew what shewas doing and whom she was dealing with, and this comforting withconfections was not without its kindly girlish tact. Chocolates were oneof Phemie’s numerous school-girl weaknesses, and a weakness so rarelyindulged in that she perceptibly brightened when her friend produced thegay-colored, much-gilded box. And thus stimulated, she poured forth hersorrows with more coherence and calmness. She was to go to Switzerland,that was settled, and the others were to be placed in various otherhighly select educational establishments. They were becoming too oldnow, Lady Augusta had decided, to remain under Dolly’s care.

  “And then,” added Euphemia, half timidly, “
you won’t be vexed if I tellyou, will you?”

  “Certainly not,” answered Dolly, who knew very well what was coming,though poor Phemie evidently thought she was going to impart anextremely novel and unexpected piece of intelligence. “What is it,Phemie?”

  “Well, somehow or other, I don’t believe mamma exactly likes you,Dolly.”

  Now, considering circumstances, this innocent speech amounted to a richsort of thing to say, but Dolly did not laugh; she might caricature LadyAugusta for the benefit of her own select circle of friends, but shenever made jokes about her before Phemie, however sorely she might betempted. So, now she helped herself to a chocolate with perfect sobrietyof demeanor.

  “Perhaps not,” she admitted. “I have thought so myself, Phemie.” Andthen, as soon as possible, changed the subject.

  At length Phemie rose to go. As Lady Augusta was under the impressionthat she was merely taking the dismal daily constitutional, which wasone of her unavoidable penances, it would not do to stay too long.

  “So I _must_ go,” lamented Phemie; “but, Dolly, if you would n’t mind, Ishould _so_ like to see the baby. I have never seen him since the day wecalled with mamma,--and I am so fond of babies, and he was so pretty.”

  Dolly laughed, in spite of herself. She remembered the visit so well,and Lady Augusta’s loftily resigned air of discovering, in the passivelydegenerate new arrival, the culminating point of the family depravity.

  “It is much to be regretted,” she had said, disapprovingly; “but it isexactly what I foresaw from the first, and you will have to make thebest of it.”

  And then, on Dolly’s modestly suggesting that they intended to do so,and were not altogether borne down to the earth by the heavy nature oftheir calamity, she had openly shuddered.

  But Phemie had quite clung to the small bundle of lawn and flannel, andthough she had never seen Tod since, she had by no means forgotten him.

  “He will be quite a big boy when I come back,” she added. “And I shouldso like to see him once again while he is a baby.”

  “Oh, you shall see him,” said Dolly. “Tod is the one individual in thishouse who always feels himself prepared to receive visitors. He is n’tfastidious about his personal appearance. If you will come into the nextroom, I dare say we shall find him.”

  And they did find him. Being desirous of employing, to the greatestadvantage, the time spent in his retirement within the bosom of hisfamily, he was concentrating his energies upon the mastication of thetoe of his slipper, upon which task he was bestowing the strictest andmost undivided attention, as he sat in the centre of the hearth-rug.

  “He has got another tooth, Aunt Dolly,” announced ‘Toinette,triumphantly, as soon as the greetings were over. “Show Aunt Dolly histooth.” And, being laid upon his back on the maternal knee, in the mostuncomfortable and objectionable of positions, the tooth was exhibited,as a matter calling forth public rejoicings.

  Phemie knelt on the carpet before him, the humblest of his devotees.

  “He is prettier than ever,” she said. “Do you think he would come to me,Mrs. Crewe?”

  And, though the object of her admiration at once asserted hisprerogatives by openly rejecting her overtures with scorn, she rejoicedover him as ecstatically as if he had shown himself the most amiable ofinfant prodigies, which he most emphatically had not, probably havingbeen rendered irascible by the rash and inconsiderately displayedinterest in his dental developments. Whatever more exacting people mighthave thought, Phemie was quite satisfied.

  “I wish I was in your place, Dolly,” she said, as she was going away.“You seem so happy together here, somehow or other. Oh, dear! You don’tknow how dreadful our house seems by contrast. If things _would_ breakor upset, or look a little untidy,--or if mamma’s caps and dresses justwould n’t look so solid and heavy--”

  “Ah!” laughed Dolly, “you have n’t seen our worst side, Phemie,--theshabby side, which means worn shoes and old dresses and bills. We don’tget our whistle for nothing in Vagabondia, though, to be sure,”--andI won’t say a memory of the shabby coat-sleeve did not suggest theamendment,--“I don’t think we pay too dearly for it; and I believe thereis not one of us who would not rather pay for it than live without it.”

  And when she gave the girl her farewell kiss, it was a very warm one,with a touch of pity in it. It was impossible for her to help feelingsympathy for any one who was without the Griffith element in existence.

  After this she went out herself to apply at the printer’s, and was sentfrom there to Brabazon Lodge, which was a suburban establishment, in achilly aristocratic quarter. An imposing edifice, Brabazon Lodge, builtof stone, and most uncompromisingly devoid of superfluous ornament.No mock minarets or unstable towers at Brabazon Lodge,--a substantialmansion in a substantial garden behind substantial iron gates, and sosolid in its appointments that it was quite a task for Dolly to raisethe substantial lion’s head which formed the front-door knocker.

  “Wanted, a young person,” she was saying to herself, meekly, when hersummons was answered by a man-servant, and she barely escaped announcingherself as “the young person, sir.”

  Once inside the house, she was not kept waiting. She was ushered into awell-appointed side-room, where a bright fire burned in the grate. Theman retired to make known her arrival to his mistress, and Dolly settledherself in a chair by the hearth.

  “I wonder how many ‘young persons’ have been sent away sorrowing thismorning,” she said, “and I wonder how Griffith will like the idea of myfilling the position of companion to an elderly lady, or any other orderof lady, for the matter of that? Poor old fellow!” and she gave vent toan unmistakable sigh.

  But the appearance of the elderly lady put an end to her regrets. Thedoor opened and she entered, and Dolly rose to receive her. The nextinstant, however, she gave a little start. She had seen the elderly ladybefore, and confronting her now recognized her at once,--Miss BereniceMacDowlas. And that Miss MacDowlas recognized her also was quiteevident, for she advanced with the air of one who was not at all at aloss.

  “How do you do?” she remarked, succinctly, and gave Dolly her hand.

  That young person took it modestly.

  “I believe I have had the pleasure--” she was beginning, when MissMacDowlas interrupted her.

  “You met me at the Bilberrys’,” she said. “I remember seeing you verywell. You are Dorothea Crewe.”

  Dolly bowed in her most insinuatingly graceful manner.

  “Take a seat,” said Miss MacDowlas.

  Dolly did so at once.

  Miss MacDowlas looked at her with the air of an elderly lady who was notdispleased.

  “I remember you very well,” she repeated. “You were governess there. Whydid you leave?”

  Dolly did not know very definitely, and told her so.

  The notice given her had been unexpected. Lady Augusta had said it wasbecause her pupils were old enough to be sent from home.

  “Oh!” said Miss MacDowlas, and looked at her again from her hat to hershoes.

  “You are fond of reading?” she asked next

  “Yes,” answered Dolly.

  “You read French well?”

  “Yes,” said Dolly. She knew she need not hesitate to say that, at least.

  “You are good company and are fond of society?”

  “I am fond of society,” said Dolly, “and I hope I am ‘good company,’”

  “You don’t easily lose patience?”

  “It depends upon circumstances,” said Dolly.

  “You can play and sing?”

  “I did both the night I met you,” returned the young person.

  “So you did,” said Miss MacDowlas, and examined her again.

  It was rather an odd interview, upon the whole, but it did not endunfortunately. Miss MacDowlas wanted a companion who was quick-wittedand amusing, and, having seen that Dolly was both on the evening of theBilberry clan gathering, she had taken a fancy to her. So after a littlesharp questioning, she announ
ced her decision. She would employ her tofill the vacant situation at the same rate of salary she had enjoyedin her position of governess to the youthful Bilberrys, and she wouldemploy her at once.

  “I want somebody to amuse me,” she said, “and I think you can do it.I am often an invalid, and my medical man says the society of a youngperson will benefit me.”

  So it was settled that the following week Dolly should take up her abodeat Brabazon Lodge and enter upon the fulfilment of her duties. Shewas to read, play, sing, assist in the entertainment of visitors, andotherwise make herself generally useful, and, above all, she was to beamusing.

  She left the house and proceeded homeward in a peculiar frame of mind.She could have laughed, but she was compelled to admit to herself thatshe could also have cried with equal readiness. She had met with anadventure indeed. She was a young person at large no longer; henceforthshe was the property of the elderly dragon she had so often laughed atwith Griffith. And yet the dragon had not been so objectionable, afterall. She had been abrupt and unceremonious, but she had been better thanLady Augusta, and she had not shown herself illiberal. But there wouldbe no more daily visits from Griffith, no more _téte-à-tétes_ in theshabby parlor, no more sitting by the fire when the rest had left theroom, no more tender and inconsistently long farewells at the frontdoor. It was not pleasant to think about. She found herself catching herbreath quickly, with a sound like a little sob.

  “He will miss it awfully,” she said to herself, holding her muff closelywith her small, cold hands, and shutting her eyes to work away a tear;“but he won’t miss it more than I shall. He might live without meperhaps, but I could n’t live without him. I wonder if ever two peoplecared for each other as we do before? And I wonder if the time will evercome--” And there she broke off again, and ended as she so often did.“Poor old fellow!” she said. “Poor, dear, patient, faithful fellow! howI love you!”

  She hurried on briskly after this, but she was wondering all thetime what he would say when he found out that they were really to beseparated. He would rebel, she knew, and anathematize fate vehemently.But she knew the rest of them would regard it as rather a rich joke thatchance should have thrown her into the hands of Miss MacDowlas. They hadall so often laughed at Griffith’s descriptions of her and her letters,given generally when he had been galled into a caustic mood by thearrival of one of the latter.

  Beaching Bloomsbury Place, Dolly found her lover there. He had droppedin on his way to his lodgings, and was awaiting her in a fever ofexpectation, having heard the news from Aimée.

  “What is this Aimée has been telling me?” he cried, the moment sheentered the room. “You can’t be in earnest, Doll! You can’t leave homealtogether, you know.”

  She tossed her muff on the table and sat down on one of the low chairs,with her feet on the fender.

  “I thought so until this morning,” she said, a trifle mournfully; “butit can’t be helped. The fact is, it is all settled now. I am an engagedyoung person.”

  “Settled!” exclaimed Griffith, indignantly. “Engaged! Dolly, I did n’tthink you would have done it.”

  “I could n’t help doing it,” said Dolly, her spirits by no means risingas she spoke. “How could I?”

  But he would not be consoled by any such cold comfort. He had regardedthe possibility of her leaving the house altogether as something notlikely to be thought of. Very naturally, he was of the opinion thatDolly was as absolute a necessity to every one else as she was tohimself. What _should_ he do without her? How could he exist? It was anunreasoning insanity to talk about it. He was so roused by his subjectindeed, that, neither of them being absolutely angelic in temperament,they wandered off into something very like a little quarrel aboutit,--he, goaded to lover-like madness by the idea that she could livewithout him; she, finding her low spirits culminate in a touch of angerat his hotheaded, affectionate obstinacy.

  “But it is not to be expected,” he broke out at last, without anyreason whatever,--“it is not to be expected that you can contend againsteverything. You are tired of disappointment, and I don’t blame you.I should be a selfish dolt if I did. If Gowan had been in my place hecould have married you, and have given you a home of your own. I nevershall be able to do that. But,” with great weakness and evidence oftribulation at the thought, “I didn’t think you would be so cool aboutit, Dolly.”

  “Cool!” cried Dolly, waxing wroth and penitent both at once, as usual.“Who is cool? Not I, that is certain. I shall miss you every hour of mylife, Griffith.” And the sad little shadow on her face was so real thathe was pacified at once.

  “I am an unreasonable simpleton!” was his next remorseful outburst.

  “You have said that before,” said Dolly, rather hard-heartedly; but inspite of it she did not refuse to let him be as affectionate as he chosewhen he knelt down by her chair, as he did the next minute.

  “It would be a great deal better for me,” she half whispered, breakingthe suspicious silence that followed,--“it would be a great deal betterfor _me_ if I did not care for you half so much;” and yet at the sametime she leaned a trifle more toward him in the most traitorous ofhalf-coaxing, half-reproachful ways.

  “It would be the death of _me_,” said Griffith; and he at once plungedinto an eloquently persuasive dissertation upon the height and depthand breadth and force of his love for her. He was prone to suchdissertations, and always ready with one to improve any occasion; andI am compelled to admit that, far from checking him, Dolly rather likedthem, and was given to encourage and incite him to their delivery.When this one was ended, he was quite in the frame of mind to listento reason, and let her enter into particulars concerning her morning’sefforts, which she did, at length, only adding a flavor of themysterious up to the introduction of Miss MacDowlas.

  “What!” cried out Griffith, when she let out the secret. “Confound it!No! Not Aunt MacDowlas in the flesh, Dolly? You are joking.”

  “No,” answered Dolly, shaking her head at the amazed faces of the girls,who had come in during the recital, and who had been guilty of theimpropriety of all exclaiming at once when the climax was reached. “Iam in earnest. I am engaged as companion to no less a person than MissBerenice MacDowlas.”

  “Why, it is like something out of a three-volumed novel,” said Mollie.

  “It is a good joke,” said ‘Toinette.

  “It is very awkward,” commented Aimée. “If she finds out you are engagedto Griffith, she will think it so indiscreet of you both that she willcut him off with a shilling.”

  “Indiscreet!” echoed Dolly. “So we are indiscreet, my sage youngfriend,--but indiscretion is like variety, it is the spice of life.”

  And by this brisk speech she managed to sweep away the shadow whichhad touched Griffith’s face, at the unconscious hint at their lack ofwisdom.

  “Don’t say such a thing again,” she said to Aimée afterward, whenthey were talking the matter over, as they always talked things overtogether, “or he will fancy that you share his own belief that he hassomething to reproach himself with. Better to be indiscreet than to loveone another less.”

  “A great deal better,” commented the wise one of the family, oracularly.She was not nineteen yet, this wise one, but she was a great comfortand help to Dolly, and indeed to all of them. “And it is n’t _my_ wayto blame you, either, Dolly, though things _do_ look so entangled. _I_never advised you to give it up, you know.”

  “Give it up,” cried Dolly, a soft, pathetic warmth and color rising toher face and eyes. “Give it up! There would be too much of what haspast and what is to come to give up with it. Give it up! I wouldn’t if Icould, and I could n’t if I would.”